February 16, 2014 (Celtic service)
Matthew 5:21-37
This is a truly dreadful Gospel. It’s one of those that I cringe as I
read. When I saw my husband after Church
this morning he said that reading made him never want to go to Church
again. This morning John preached on
another reading entirely, but felt like he had to address this one at least
briefly since it’s so awful. John’s take
on it was that Jesus was spreading the blame around, enlarging the category of
people to include all of us, so that all of us would see that we are in need of
God’s grace. That helps a little.
There is a tiny piece of this
reading, though, that rang uncomfortably true for me as I read it this morning. That part about how we treat our brothers and
our sisters. The warning against holding
grudges against them and stopping what we are doing (even if it means leaving
Church!) to go be reconciled with them if they have something against us.
I can share the reason for my
discomfort tonight because my son isn’t here.
My Lego-loving 7 year old came home from a play date at a friend’s house
a few days ago and I could sense somehow a glimmer or a guilty conscience. It turned out that he had come home with his
friend’s Gold Ninja Lego minifigure. He
had trouble admitting it, trouble taking the blame for it, trouble telling me
the truth, but lots of conversation and tears, it finally came out. He knew the Gold Ninja had to go back; he
didn’t want to look at the thing, much less play with it. But he also didn’t want his friend to know
he’d taken it. His idea was to mail it
back anonymously. Of course, as a
parent, this was a teaching moment, however painful. I explained to him that he had done something
wrong, and that we all do things that are wrong sometimes, and the most
important thing now was what he did next.
Now he had the chance to fix it, to tell the truth, and to be a good
friend, by not only returning the Gold Ninja but also apologizing to his
friend. My son worried. He worried that his friend would be mad. He worried that he wouldn’t want to play
again. He worried that maybe he’d
somehow want to get him back. And I have
to admit that I worried too. What if his
friend’s mother decided she didn’t want her son hanging out with my budding hooligan? What if she saw something in my parenting
that had led to this? But my son and I
sat down and he tearfully wrote a note.
“Dear [Friend], I am so sorry that I took this. Please forgive me.” I actually put off delivering it for a couple
days because it felt so uncomfortable, but finally after reading this Gospel in
Church this morning I knew it was past time.
I delivered the note to my son's friend and spoke with his mom. I didn’t make my son come with me because he
was so sad; I decided if it happened again that would be the next step. But as it turned out, I wish he had come with
me because there was so much grace in that meeting. The friend was thrilled to get a letter from his
buddy, and excited to get the Gold Ninja (which I don’t think he’d even
missed). And the other mom was full of
understanding and good humor.
So much grace all around. The weight lifted from my son, and from
me. A very real and good conversation
between two moms that makes room for growth in our friendship. A deepening understanding of parenthood for
me, and, hopefully, of truth-telling and conscience-building for my son.
It seems like it is that sort of
deepening and growth that community make possible.
This morning I caught part of Krista
Tippett’s interview on NPR with at artist about a new exhibit at the
Minneapolis Museum of Art called “Sacred.”
They were talking about that sense in both a museum and a church of
being in the presence of beauty and goodness and peace – that feeling of awe
and wonder of something bigger than ourselves.
And about how, both in a museum and in a church, we are somehow alone
with the Sacred, yet also are together in our experience. A community is built. Krista asked her guest what she thought was
the most important question of our time and her answer was “How do we live
together?”
When we are here, in Church, we are
in some sense having our own spiritual experiences. But we are also a community. We worship and pray and eat bread and wine
together, and the candles we light add to the light from the candles other
people light, each one of our voices adds to the beauty of the songs we sing,
the piece of bread we swallow comes from a larger loaf. And in what we do in here, we are just a tiny
fraction of the much bigger Body of Christ; all that we do in here points to
what we do out there. Our love of God
and neighbor in here strengthens us for to continue that love when we step
outside these doors and aren’t surrounded by prayerful silence and the warm
glow of candles.
I wonder if there are people in your
life that you are holding anger towards or who might be holding something against
you? Are there places, big or small,
that need reconciling? How can the love
God has for you, and the love you have for God, flow over into some
relationship in your life that could use a little grace?
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